We have fought long and hard for ten years here in our PLC on behalf of kids. As we get ready to crank up yet another year of discussion, I want to thank everyone who has stayed along for the ride and anyone who has just recently joined us.
Our dream of a private place where people know and trust each other, though impossible to achieve completely in an internet setting, has largely been accomplished. Our group is secure and imaginative and I would go to war with some of the individuals in this group. In fact, we already have been to war together on a number of occasions, if we look back and think about it.
The war, as wars do, seems to be continuing. Short wars become long wars. But we continue to fight hard. The brave – that is the only word for it – brave efforts that we have made, especially in more recent years, are bringing results. We have made tremendous progress in the areas of assessment and grading, strategies, mental health and others. True leaders emerged from this group in 2016.
Some of us have also dipped our toes into the ocean of non-targeted input, without sending the message that targeted input is no longer valid. Of course targeted input is valid – it’s comprehensible input! So, as we move now into 2017, it is nice to know that we are making progress, exploring new ideas, while always keeping our main focus on our mental health.
That said, Tina and I have a plan to turn this site into a place where the targeted gold mine of ten years of articles and comments will be available to miners who wish to dig around in there, while opening up a new mine, the non-targeted gold mine. Tina and I and many others will be spending more time carrying heavy pick axes into the non-targeted mine this year. Why?
Because we feel that, after training with so many people this past summer and after working together on the topic of non-targeted input for a full year now, we will be able to do a better job of creating stories and of enjoying our work more with non-targeted input.
My prayer for 2017 is that we learn this year how to truly enjoy our jobs. If we cannot enjoy our jobs, then why are we even talking about all this stuff?
So the PLC will undergo some fairly big changes and additions in that interest this year. All the the old content of the past decade will of course be available here, but the car is definitely going around a curve. Luckily, it is a self driving car. That is what Tina and I are working on.
